Introduction
As famous guitar builder Ervin Somogyi says, that a luthier is defined by that one person has all the skills to completely design and construct a guitar by himself without outsourcing anything. Based on that, I guess that I can call myself a luthier.
My name is Bart Zuidema part-time “luthier”. Happily married, 2 kids and living since 2014 in the wonderful place called Annen in the province Drenthe in the Netherlands.
Let’s tell something about myself, I was born and raised in the northern parts of the Netherlands. After graduation of a degree in medical product development, I got to work in an electrical company which is responsible for the engineering and integration of the electrical installation on ships. Within this company I started at the engineering department and in the years developed myself in several professions (Engineer, Lead engineer, projectmanager) until now, I’m responsible for all standardisation and technical stuff within our business unit.
Since my interests are very wide, I use my spare time to develop myself in several ways. I have always been interested in guitar playing, arts, drawing, photography, designing, electronics, woodworking and always trying to teach and improve myself in all these aspects.
Several years ago it resulted in combining all these interests in guitar building or also called “Luthiery”.
The start
My first guitar build was started by accident. I have to explain this because how can anyone build a guitar byaccident… In 2016 I had to renovate a certain area of my house. The result of this renovation a large amount of red cedar came of my house. As always interested in woodworking I remembered that cedar is used in guitar building. That triggered my interest and I started investigating how guitars are built and started teaching myself.
Since the red cedar planks that I used where nailed down to beams at a certain distance, I had to scale down an existing design to ¾ of its original size, because otherwise the nail holes were visible.
Doing this I had to alter the complete guitar in scale length, size etc. but for example leaving the same neck widths. The guitar was made for 90% from leftovers from the home improvement and resulted in a quite nice guitar. The end result is viewed in the picture at the side. Of course being a perfectionist I saw several flaws in the end resulted and triggered me to do better in the next guitar.
Method
Guitar building is in origin a very traditional profession. Improvements are made via empirical ways, which results in that a lot of guitar builders have their own experiences and also opinions in which way they find that a guitar is to be built. Because I rely more on actual facts rather than opinions, I always try to understand why something is working or not, rather than “Hey, that is the way we always done that” or “that is the way I also do it and it always turned out great”. Of course there are very experienced guitar builder out there that produce very high quality guitars in traditional building processes. But I’m a trying to do it different, because, yeah…. , that just the way I am.
Another very broad discussed opinion is that a handcrafted guitar is the best that you can have. When I hear that, I always remember a phrase that Bob Taylor (Taylor guitars) mentioned in an interview, “When is that last time you made a guitar with only your bare hands and teeth??” In my opinion the optimum is a combination of both. In my method I use roughly 90% handcrafts but are not afraid to use the CNC machine when it helps to make the guitar better. With better I mean better in sound, playability and of course in looks. The CNC is not used to save time in my building process.
An acoustic guitar is a very complex instrument on which hundreds of technical investigation papers are written. I try to uses a certain amount of science next to tradition in guitar building, which can improve the sound quality and playability. For example I use sound measuring techniques / spectrum analyse of soundboard plates to calculate the optimum thickness/weight/stiffness for the specific guitar type, so that the top plate will deliver the best outcome when a snare is plucked.
Within the guitar building it is not possible to exactly engineer the outcome of the sound. But there are several ways to nodal tune the guitar after they are built. In my building process I also apply empirical ways by measuring weights, flexibility and spectrum analyses during the building process. So that I can learn wat happens when I change items within different guitar builds and continuously improving the guitars after each build.
Workshop
My workshop is a relatively small working area of around 20m2, but contains all the equipment and tools needed to construct the guitars. In 2021 I upgrade my workshop completely with new floor, walls and hanging system for all the tools which made it a much more pleasant working environment.
Attached to my workshop I have an multifunctional room used as an office but also used to do sound testing and store wood for the guitars at a specific humidity level. I’m always collecting nice pieces of wood that can be used for guitars later on.
Over the years I invested in tooling specific for guitar building which results in a completely fully stocked working space. You need a lot of tools a and jigs and moulds for building guitars. Most of the jigs and moulds are made in the workshop itself, most of the time with the CNC milling machine. I remember one time I was CNC milling a part which I needed for making a tool…..to build a jig… I expect in the future that more jigs and mould will come because I would like to build at least 2 more types of guitars so I hope I will find the space to store hem.
Custom
Why should you buy a custom built guitar rather than going to the normal guitar shop and buy a factory built guitar? There are several reasons to do so:
Sound quality. A factory built guitar is most of the times to heavily built. For example the soundboard plates are not tuned to the specific wood that is used. Each plate of wood is different and has his optimum thickness that differs within each plate. Factories build according specification and therefore normally over-build the guitars which result in heavier guitar parts that will produce less sound, in volume but also in overtones.
Quality. The starting point for factories is of course making money. To do so their starting point is different that a custom builder which should be inn producing the highest possible quality.
Customisation. Normally in the fact with factory guitars is what you see is what you get. With a custom built, all parts on the guitar can be changed depending on your needs. In custom build you can deliver a certain sound of the guitar but also the looks of the guitar can be anything that you like. (of course within restrictions). Just some examples: fretboard radius( also compound), neck width, wood types, binding type and off course specific inlay requests and so on. In custom building you get exactly the guitar that you would like to have. My goal is to build guitars that stay in the family of the future owner.
Building process. In my build I will take you along during the building process. You will receive photographs during the process. We will have continuously interaction about the building process and choices that are to be made.
